travel – Kensho Homestead

What’s Been Lost III

When I first started watching alternative history Youtube channels I was skeptical, and I still am. I want the truth, not more redirection. Not more fantasy. Not more illusion. Not more heavily curated or mediocre nonsense.

So far, I don’t sense I’ve found it, but I’ve become ok with never finding it. I’ve resigned myself to what’s as close to the truth as I’ll be able to manage to get to in this lifetime, which is: I’ll never know the truth, but I may be able to manage truth-adjacent with enough study and discernment. I can confidently opt-out of the lie, permanently. That’s a big improvement to the path of blind acceptance I was, and most are, still on.

The first step toward truth was achieved pretty easily, it began with calling bluffs. As long as I don’t allow it to frustrate me, which isn’t exactly easy, this alone feels pretty empowering. For me, as usual, I had to experience it directly, no Youtube influencers, no professors, no self-styled experts can convince me, not without applying my own eyes and ears and reason.

I looked to the architecture because that’s what’s visible, and only then to the official history, because that’s what’s accepted as truth. I started in my own neighborhood, that is, the small city closest to us, called Palestine. It’s actually easier I think to consider the small city, rather than the large ones, because there’s been less tampering more likely, more holes in the narratives that can be more easily noticed by the novice.

The well-maintained Redlands Hotel today.

Like, the story of the popular Redlands Hotel, where I sometimes go for lunch on my rare trips to town. It’s a lovely old building that they’ve done a relatively decent job of keeping up, especially considering the condition of the vast majority of the downtown area.

Interestingly, they have a panaramic photo of the early years of the city on display. As you follow the railroad tracks from left to right in the photo, you end up at graffitti painted on the side of a building. That is, the word OWL.

That’s my cue to start calling bluffs.

The owners of this hotel are deep into the official history, which is superficially helpful. As it goes, in 1914 when stockholders rushed to build the brown brick building, it was oxen that delivered the sand for the concrete. That is, sand from the Trinity River, 30 miles away. Are you kidding me?! That’s a pretty big bluff.

And even with that serious transport challenge, on supposed dirt roads, they managed to complete the five story building in a year. Apparently dirt roads weren’t effected back then by rain or snow, neither were the human builders, or the oxen. Amazing.

Even more amazing was that another striking building was going up on the other side of town, that is, the County Court House. The two structures apparently shared Italian artisans who installed hexagon tile to both buildings.

The original burned court house, depending on which source cited. Another source states the original courthouse was a small building made of wood.

“Considered one of the most modern constructions of its era, and built to withstand the challenges of time, its walls are made of concrete, masonry blocks, sheetrock, and metal studs—evident in the structure today.”

My those were some busy boys and oxen!

In fact, with just a bit of digging, we learn there was in fact another town at the Trinity River junction where the cherished sand came from, now missing from both the land and the history books. But, there remains one hand-drawn map available in the archives, Magnolia was the town’s name, and it was apparently so bustling with commerce and activity according to one source that they called it the ‘St. Louis of the South”.

One of the many demolished structures of the non-existent town once called Magnolia, according to the official history.

“Magnolia was established in the early 1840s as a Trinity River cotton port and was named for a large magnolia tree in the center of the townsite. Magnolia had a post office from 1851 to 1871. William A. Haygood was one of the principal property owners in the community and operated cotton gins, a hotel, a livery stable, a general store, a blacksmith shop, and a local ferry. Among other businesses in the community were a drugstore and John McClannahan and son’s warehouse. Magnolia was reported to have a population of 800 at its peak around 1863, when the town had thirty-three blocks of residences and businesses. Most shipments from the port went to Galveston, but on May 5, 1868, a steamboat traveled up the Trinity to Dallas. After it was bypassed by the International and Great Northern Railroad in the 1870s, Magnolia declined rapidly. By the 1930s it was no longer shown on the county highway map, though its name was preserved in that of the two schools that stood on the site of the former town. In 1932 the Magnolia school for whites had an enrollment of forty-three and the Magnolia school for blacks, thirty-four. A 1982 map showed only the Magnolia Cemetery at the townsite.”
Magnolia, Texas

This is the sort of vessel which would have been traveling the Trinity River through Magnolia.

Nothing remains of this supposed river hub besides the hand-drawn map of the area where it was supposed to have been, where is now located some simple family houses, an intersection and the cemetery. I couldn’t even locate the river, or the supposed subsequent railroad.

Several other beautiful structures were also said to have been destroyed in this small city of Palestine not long after they were constructed.

The Temple Opera House was built originally as the Palestine Masonic Temple with the cornerstone date of August 29, 1878. In 1907, it was bought and remodeled by W.E. Swift and known as the New Temple Theater. In 1929, it was the home of Garrett Motor Company, Palestine’s first Ford Motor Car Agency. It was demolished in 1962. It originally had another floor on top, but this was removed at some point.

At some point? Not even the official historians can tell us more specifically.

Exquisite building of multi-functions which didn’t have enough value to the small city to remain for a full century. The small box building housing a liquor store in that location now is so much better, I’m sure.

The “Railroad YMCA Building” was another one.

The Railroad YMCA opened in April of 1903 and continued as the YMCA until the building burned in the mid 1950’s. Interestingly, there seems to be no recorded photos available of this horrid fire event of a huge BRICK building. Nothing to see here! (In fact, I believe this to be another building altogether, more on that in a future post.)

As I searched the stacks of the local history at the library I was surprised to find several ‘fake books’ — that is supposed local history written by a source who cannot be located and is listed in the local phone book with phone numbers that don’t work and at addresses which never existed. Three different phone books, three different addresses, I actually went to all of them personally. Nothing. The books appear to be written by AI! I brought this to the attention of the library board, and no one cared. At all. I never heard back, though I went personally to the board meeting with evidence in hand. They didn’t even care to know which books it was with these obvious falsities, possibly written by an unaccountable AI, and sitting in their stacks posing as actual local history written by a fake person.

And now I feel frustration setting in, so enough for now, to be continued . . .

What’s Been Lost II

We’ve all heard the expressions: “History is a set of lies agreed upon” and “History is written by the victors” and most have come to accept these tropes.

But what they may not have considered is when the history is that flexible, all those academic fields which are history adjacent–like anthropology, sociology, philosophy, literature, all cultural studies, even linguistics– become subject to those authoritarian whims and fashionable irregularities.

Generalization, subjectivity, distant observation, even making obvious comparisons across vast and complex measurable units–ie. pattern recognition–is not just discouraged, it’s potential grounds for dismissal. It’s considered sloppy, unprofessional, unacademic. Pseudo-subjects and conspiracy theory.

Academics are especially vulnerable to such manipulations as their fields are controlled in a strict hierarchical system and their studies, even as tenured professors, tend to stay very narrow in scope. They do not need to strive for a cohesive worldview in their academic work as they are mostly employed to measure the minutia, to dig deep into one tiny corner of the field, as has been the case with the historical and architectural world of the Mound Builders.

What the volumes of academic work on these cultures tend to do is narrow in so microscopically as to make all similarities irrelevant and cross-cultural observations inadmissable. They debate ad nasauem around shards of pottery found just beneath the surface of their archeological sites and the thousands of ways these tiny artefacts differ from one locale to the next.

There are literally thousands of pages published on comparisons and categorizations of tiny fossils and shards of the various Mound Builder tribes of the Americas. Specific measurements are taken of the space between the decorative lines and their width, length and coloration. All is catelogued in such microscopic detail as to bore to tears all but the most myopic of minds.

Truly, it is a form of academic gaslighting. Keep searching right here, right in this tiny framework where we’ve given the appropriate boundaries and designations. Don’t broaden, don’t do your own investigations, don’t venture out of your assigned territory, all alien parameters will be squashed with contempt and mockery and quite likely, career death.

Observe, very closely, and question every narrative.

That singular, rigid, hierachical model has been demolished with the Internet and for me, who formally studied and taught for four decades the very subjects now being shamelessly dismantled, I couldn’t be more pleased about it.

Actually, I could be. If there was a guarantee the ends would somehow justify all these means–as in the decades of lies and indoctrination and then subsequent ripping away of those foundations and the now erupting attempts to filter the masses into new molds for better slave management and more prosperous slaveholders–then I would certainly be more pleased.

But I’m not so naive as to think there’s ever any such guarantees. (As an entertaining aside, James Corbett here at his comedic best with more on our system of modern slavery.)
https://youtu.be/ZjwO9_3g4xQ?si=8u5_OumKlk-LOMub

https://youtu.be/ZjwO9_3g4xQ?si=pw51f4Aejlhz1zGX

But my topic today is a continuation of the last What’s Been Lost new Kensho series. And say what you want about formal education, I’ve experienced the pros and the great many cons, but for all those naysayers and critics, my serious education these days comes from Youtube, mostly. I know, right?!

Don’t knock it ’till you try it, there are some really amazing teachers there (they call them creators now, which is nice) and I’m not watching them to buy into any of their conclusions, but just to appreciate their work, collect their evidence, and consider, that’s all.

There are relatively few in my life who care about this stuff at all, so I’m grateful for the company and impressed with their body of work. Yes, I do understand some of them are part of a big club, and I’m not in it. I don’t mind. And I’ve got no where else to go, and I’ve got a bit of time and loads of interest.

So for those others who might be interested in exploring and considering with me, we continue in search of what’s been lost.

Last time I shared about the Yakhchal, a common radiative cooling system used from ancient times, still in operation in parts of the Middle East, and perhaps close by as well, as close as Dallas.

https://kenshohomestead.org/2026/01/18/whats-been-lost/

Now I will introduce another thread to this story, the so-called Mound Builder ‘indigenous’ tribes of the South, officially referred to as having been ‘occupying’ these lands before the arrival of the Europeans.

https://youtu.be/Gw6A2RgVwjs?si=bUXC9lyrKKuRHSQb

A recent video by Jarid Boosters was perfectly timed and is well worth a complete viewing. In it he considers one such Mound Builder culture in present-day Moundville, Alabama, once called the Kingdom of Pafalaya, which includes Fort Morgan. Most of these sites are former military installations and are owned by universities and used as tourist traps now. Some of them are privately owned, all have vast areas not open to the public.

We have one very close to us as well, known as Caddo Mounds, which I’ve written about briefly before, after a sudden (manufactured) tornado hit during their cultural ceremony, destroying much property, killing one and injuring many. The site has since been upgraded and reopened, though there is little to see besides some very basic ‘replica’ huts and of course, a large gift shop.

One of the most famous ones is in the mid-West, near St. Louis, not that far from where I grew up, called Cahokia Mounds.
https://youtu.be/Gw6A2RgVwjs?si=bUXC9lyrKKuRHSQb

What I propose has happened with these sites is a deliberate militarized program of generational amnesia.

“Generational amnesia refers to the phenomenon where each generation forgets important knowledge and experiences from previous generations, leading to a distorted understanding of the past and the environment. This can result in a lack of awareness about changes in society and nature, as new generations accept their current conditions as the norm without recognizing what has been lost.”

They tell us ‘Generative AI’ will solve this mounting modern social problem. Promises, promises. Let’s not wait on those any longer.

For a bit of background, Mound Builders refers to ‘prehistorical’ cultures of the ‘ancient’ South. For our purposes, ‘prehistorical’ refers to the most recent rewriting of history, or ‘reset’ as many interested in these topics are calling it; and ‘ancient’ refers to the ‘Roman’ era and all those pre-dating it. In this version of history we examine especially the period of the so-called “Civil” War, or the war between the states, or the war of Northern agression, or whatever other term seems appropriate for that period of time when much of the southern US was destroyed and their history re-written by the victors.

At this time the official narratives went under the command and control of the military, if they weren’t there already. In my estimation we have always been a military industrial complex, this wasn’t a new phenomenon predicted by another puppet president.

There are other ‘fringe’ channels that deal more specifically with military history, that is not my main interest, one I could recommend for this angle would be that of a former history academic:
https://youtu.be/LqiZPX0Ordc?si=IOKaZQ7FT2Bjr7Wg

In fact, there are so-called Mound sites all over the South, and I’d suggest many of them are as yet ‘undiscovered’ because they sit on private property where even the land owners have no idea what’s beneath them.

In nearby Nacogdoches there is another ‘curated’ Mound site:

“Excavations at the Washington Mound site have uncovered the archeological remains of a large Middle Caddoan period (ca. A.D. 1250-1350) mound complex in south-central East Texas. The investigations of this heretofore unknown complex indicate that there was a significant post-Alto phase culture in the region that may have had a significant impact on subsequent regional Caddoan manifestations.”

While there are teams of academics studying the tiny differences in the fossils on the surface and money rolling in from the tourist trade, and grants galore for those academics willing to tow the official line, the accepted narrative framework gets further cemented into the public consciousness.

The new Southern history started in 1888 or thereabouts, with 1933 appearing oddly often. The commonalities of these sites, like the ‘charcoal-filled pits’ and ‘post holes’ are left as side curiousities or mysteries or given barely-plausible labels like ‘ceremonial spaces’ or ‘burial grounds’.

According to Wiki we see some typical features, like the involvement of the Smithsonian Institution, and a minimum of curious names and the all-important dates to keep our minds distracted from the bigger picture:

The earliest recorded written mention of the mounds was in 1779 by Athanase de Mézières, who traveled from Louisiana to San Antonio in the employ of the Spanish government. In 1919 American James Edwin Pearce was the first professional archeologist to record the site for the Bureau of Ethnology (Smithsonian Institution). In 1933 archeologist E. B. Sayles concluded that the site was a Caddo mound center, after conducting surface collection of artifacts at the location.
The first scientific excavations were conducted from 1939 to 1941 by H. Perry Newell, a University of Texas archeologist with the federal Work Projects Administration in the government of President Franklin D. Roosevelt. When Newell died, archeologist Alex D. Krieger took over investigations at the site and concluded that it had been a major Caddo site. Further excavations in the 1960s and early 1970s by Dee Ann Story pinpointed the timeline of the site to 780 and 1260.

Following military service, Tunnell returned to Texas and began working with archeologist Ed Jelks on the Texas Rivers Basin Survey project funded by the Smithsonian Institution. Their first investigations took place along the McGee Bend of the Angelina River in East Texas, later impounded as part of Sam Rayburn Reservoir. He also worked in the Lake Amistad area along the Rio Grande.

As State Archeologist, Tunnell participated in scientific investigations at the Alamo and other important Spanish Colonial mission and presidio sites in Texas, directed archeological excavations at the ancient Folsom-age Adair-Steadman site, and braved the waters of the Rio Grande in order to record the archeological resources present in the canyons of the Big Bend region. He battled commercial salvagers to retain the 1554 Spanish shipwreck artifacts for the State of Texas and was instrumental in the development of the Antiquities Code of Texas, the legal tool to protect historic resources on public (state) land, including submerged shipwrecks.   His films and audiotapes documenting the work of numerous folk artisans and craftsmen in the Texas-Mexico border region may well represent the only records of the practitioners of many vanishing crafts and arts. In 1981, Tunnell became THC executive director, a position he held until his retirement in January 1999.   Through his decades of state service, Tunnell traveled to all 254 Texas counties and developed lasting friendships in all regions of the state. Tunnell passed away suddenly at his home on April 13, 2001.

His name was Tunnell, former military, and her name was Story. Isn’t that special. He liked to talk about Arts & Crafts. But not so much about Antiquitech.

What I wonder is, do the actual tunnels tell another story?

We’ve got mounds and post holes and charcoal-filled pits; we’ve got vast stone walls covered over by lakes and resevoirs and now deemed ‘legend’; we’ve got historical timelines that have clearly been ‘revised’, many times; we’ve got buildings and other structures that make no sense, but get little attention.

The burying of the past continues, the generational amensia widens, and aside from a few Youtubers and their marginalized audiences, I wonder if anyone else really cares.

Just in case you are one of the few who do, thank you, and you’re welcome.

More on the vast and ubiquitous caves and caverns of Texas and the mid-West on a future journey.

Disenchanting Enchanted Rock

I was so excited when I found ‘an expert’ on Enchanted Rock, who had written an entire book on the monument and its surroundings and has a website too, with lots of details. I was sure to have found a great source, I thought.

Click pic for my previous post about Enchanted Rock called “My favorite Enchanting photo”

And with a name like Kennedy, it’s gotta be good, right?

In the spirit of disobedience, in a word, no. Two words: Hell, no! Three words: Big, Fat, Disappointment!!

Wow, I didn’t realize anyone can just throw any piece of nonsense together and call it history. Or anthropology. Or pretty much any ‘science’.

Way to spoil a miraculous destination, Kennedy, thanks bunches.

But I can’t really blame him alone, it’s more than a trend. The dumbing down of the public has been documented for decades, and this sort of material that is supposed to pass as educational is a perfect case in point. So, let’s take a few pokes at it from a few of those many angles.

The History of Enchanted Rock in the Texas Hill Country by Ira Kennedy self-published in 2010 naming it https://www.amazon.com/HISTORY-ENCHANTED-ROCK-TEXAS-COUNTRY/dp/1456818783
“The Sacred Landmark of Central Texas”.

It is not sold as a children’s book and costs $21.99. According to the the Amazon page Ira Kennedy is:

“Considered as the state’s leading authority on Enchanted Rock, the sacred mountain of Central Texas, Ira has assisted the author’s of several published books, articles and the Thomas Evans mural of Enchanted Rock in the Austin-Bergstorm International Airport. IN 1992, Ira was awarded a Certificate of Appreciation from the Texas Parks and & Wildlife Department for providing numerous educational talks at Enchanted Rock Natural Area.” And it goes on.

The first Amazon review looked promising.
“Ira Kennedy is the world expert, in the opinion of many, of this beautiful Texas natural treasure. His knowledge comes from spending a great deal of his life on or near the rock. Ira is a creative genius and humble man who has written this amazing book, sure to answer all your questions about this geological wonder. Beautifully illustrated by Ira, you will keep this book among your special collections.”

The ‘book’ itself looks more like a coloring book. There are no references or citations, no bibliography or notes. While the author states he did multi-disciplinary research and himself has an advanced degree and was employed in Naval intelligence as a cryptographer, he must seriously understand what an ‘expert’ text would look like, and this one is the polar opposite of scholarly.

I can only assume ‘expert’ has taken on a new meaning sometime around the year 1999.

Let’s set the tone with his “Brief Historical Timeline” which begins his story in 12,000 B.C. and ends in 1978. With only a smattering of centuries missing, bless his heart!

We learn of a dubious-looking character named Jack Hays who was ‘an enigma’. We learn about a William Kennedy and his ‘flower-spangled’ landscape and ‘lost mines’ the ‘fueled the imaginagtion’. We learn about some immigrants from Germany in the 1840s.

We have the ‘First People’ myths and ‘The Imaginary Frontier’ of the Spanish explorer Alvar Nunez Cabeza de Vaca, who passed right through Mason County in the sixteenth century. And some childish stick figure drawings, some arrowheads and feather headdresses.

Later in the book are some drawings of angry indians who we learn may or may not have practiced human sacrifice.

And that about sums up my waste of money and time! Alas, the journey of discovery continues.

Poor, misunderstood ‘Enchanted Rock’ — I don’t even like your name anymore, so I think I’ll find a new one. And a new history to go with it. It would surely be better footnoted than this toilet paper, and good bit more entertaining I expect too!

I dare say, you there, intrepid traveler, can you smell anything beyond the boulders of bullshit?

My Favorite Enchanting Photo

I’ve gazed at it for what seems like hours, though its magic is hardly captured there. It is just reminiscent of the awe I felt.

That I took it, that’s fine enough for now. I’ll be back, no doubt about that. I’ve no idea still what I’ve seen, only that I don’t see what they say I should see.

That we traveled so many miles, and after plenty of discouragement, to get so very fortunate in the end must’ve added to the enchantment. I will cling to it, for a long time to come, I’m sure.

To be in good company, that helps, always. But I expect next time I’ll go alone, and I’ll stay a good long while, hoping that maybe a few more of its mysteries might come to present themselves to me. That’s how it seems to work.

If I’m patient enough, keen enough, present enough . . .
Perhaps.
Maybe. Or maybe not.
Already there are many obstacles.

If only they would be, these many obstacles, as permeable as these rocks are to these roots.

If only I could hear their stories and know they were real.

If only I knew. What would I do?

Creep among the rocks, disguised, like these little guys?

Or mock its odd monochromatic effect with bold color displays in every shallow pool or crevice?

What makes a sight worthy of seeing? Is worth only weighed in the eye of the beholder? How many eyes does it take to spoil a place?

Enchanted Rock is a pink granite mountain located in the Llano Uplift about 17 miles (27 km) north of Fredericksburg, Texas and 24 miles (39 km) south of Llano, Texas, United States. Enchanted Rock State Natural Area.

I don’t know much about rocks, but granite is one we’ve all heard of, thanks to its continued popularity in building, from the popular household granite countertops to Mount Rushmore and the Red Pyramid in Egypt.

This is said to be a testament to its durability, longevity, and resistance to weather.

According to Wiki, it’s quite hard:

“Granite is nearly always massive (lacking any internal structures), hard (falling between 6 and 7 on the Mohs hardness scale),[1] and tough. These properties have made granite a widespread construction stone throughout human history.”

Which makes me all the more curious about the intimate relationship between those roots and rocks. According to the official history, we’re only seeing the proverbial tip of the iceberg.

“Enchanted Rock is a small speck compared to the huge underground rock that spans over 100 square miles. That’s almost four times as big as Manhattan!”

It’s quite hard, and yet it ‘sheds’ kind of like a glacier ‘calves’?
“Eventually, weather and erosion shaped these rocks into the odd shapes you see today.”

So, what kind of weather and erosion causes a lozenge shape? Inquiring minds want to know!

A partial official explanation can perhaps be found within worldwide examples of batholiths:

“Batholiths exposed at the surface are subjected to huge pressure differences between their former location deep in the earth and their new location at or near the surface. As a result, their crystal structure expands slightly over time. This manifests itself by a form of mass wasting called exfoliation. This form of weathering causes convex and relatively thin sheets of rock to slough off the exposed surfaces of batholiths (a process accelerated by frost wedging). The result is fairly clean and rounded rock faces. A well-known result of this process is Half Dome in Yosemite Valley.”

That explains the ‘thin sheets’ perhaps, and the rounded rock face, but not so much the lozenges. And the root-rock infusions!

Continuing with Wiki:

Lanite, a rare type of brown rhyolite porphyry with sky-blue quartz crystals and rusty-pink microcline feldspar, is found nowhere else in the world except in Llano County. Llanite can be found along a highway cut 9 mi (14 km) north of Llano on Texas 16. The largest piece of polished llanite in the world can be seen at the Badu House.

The Llano Uplift, a roughly circular geologic dome of Precambrian rock, primarily granite, covers about 50 miles along Texas Highway 29 and was 1.5 billion years in the making. Call it Rock Heaven: Geologists identify 241 rocks and minerals in Llano County, including llanite, a blue-specked dark granite found nowhere else in the world.”
Travel: Rock Heaven in Llano|April 2018| TPW magazine
Lovin’ Llano | October 2008 | TPW magazine

But apparently it was not the discovery of granite, but rather that of iron ore that transformed Llano into a boom town.

“Newspapers spread the word about Llano, recklessly playing up the magnitude of the region’s mineral resources. “Llano iron ore is the finest on the continent,” one story claimed. “Iron Mountain will produce 2,000,000 to 4,000,00 tons annually after the first year.”

“Little visible evidence remains of the Llano iron boom. A 1906 tornado destroyed some of the boomtown buildings north of the river. Other structures suffered a more mysterious fate.
“A number of buildings on the north side burned,” JoAnn McDougall explains. “The owners did it to collect insurance money. They needed cash and didn’t see any other way to get it. So many buildings burned, the insurance companies stopped insuring buildings in Llano, at least for a while.”
The Badu Building

The Badu Buildinghttps://rockandvinemag.com/2024/02/the-badu-building/

According to Wiki:
The geology of northeast Africa is very similar to that of Texas, and many of the two regions’ minerals and fossils are only found in these two locations.[2] A dike of llanite crops out on Texas State Highway 16 about nine miles north of the town of Llano.[3]
Llanite, which is similar to granite, is very strong, with a crushing strength of 37,800 lb/in2 or 26,577,180 kg/m2.[4] The mineral is also very similar in appearance to pietersite

Enchanted Rock was the absolute highlight for me on this road trip, and we almost didn’t make it. For one thing, I almost might not have been able to muster any enjoyment from it at all, being that I was wickedly hung over.

A hangover that dissippated in an instant, in a sudden and unexpected weather shift. The day before I’d been suffering in intense heat walking in a shadeless midday scrubby desert and I was attempting to muster the strength for the same again. For the first 45 minutes of the drive it was not looking promising. What fortune came then, in the last 10 minutes before the entrance, was the most welcome of weather whiplash …

Except that meant the main path of the Enchanted Rock might have to close any minute. Any amount of rain makes the rocks very slick, and they want no accidents. Best get climbing quick!

To be continued . . .

For more Enchanted Rock fact and fiction, begin at the 1:06 mark.

https://youtu.be/OO61UcJMHGw?si=4x33GYsB9oI3lbuF

A Stranger in a Strange Land

Just what are the Globalists and their minions taking from us, really?

They are stealing our wealth, that much is very clear. In that move they are accumulating enormous power, those two go hand in hand. They are creating a monoculture—their ideal “One World”—which on the surface to a great many around the world sounds like a nice thing.

These folks, mostly the young and those of ‘aspiring’ economies, expect to see more opportunities, a more equal distribution of resources, better access to education, a higher standard of living.

I want those things for them too.

This doesn’t sell as well in the U.S. and other Western countries. Our standard of living is already quite high, relatively speaking. So the promotion angle of their scheme is different with us. We get verbally spanked for being too successful.

We get optimal inflation and free training in resilience and a taste of tyranny and are expected to be grateful for it.

Whether you buy into the Globalist socio-economic vision or expect to benefit from it is the crux of most folks’ concern—either for or against—if they are concerned at all.

But what’s really being stolen, the root of the issue, as I see it, is much more serious than material gains or losses, or more convenient global commerce. Or mass immigration. Or even a totalitarian takeover.

Both Hubby and I were avid travelers when we met, and continued in that vein for many years afterwards. Most of this was before widespread use of the internet, when traveling alone was really traveling alone. If you got homesick you waited two weeks for a letter, or stood in line at the pay phone, or just suffered through it.

Mark Twain has supposedly said, “Traveling makes you humble.” I believe he meant the real kind of travel, not the group tours through Europe hitting ten capitals in ten days brand of modern tourism. No military base or corporate job or trust fund to cling to either. Those types are real traveling about as much as glamping resembles real camping.

To be a stranger in a strange land is a consciousness altering and life changing experience. When I saw McDonalds and signs in English and waves of expats, I got my fill of nostalgia quickly, and moved on. I experienced lots of loneliness. LOTS. I was scared sometimes. I put myself in some compromising positions, which I then had to navigate without the safety nets of language, cultural familiarity, kinship, or commraderie. “Travails” —that is the deepest purpose of travel and what separates a traveler from a tourist, or an occupier.

When I see signs in this country in Spanish or Chinese I feel sorry for those travelers, or immigrants. They are missing something essential through our obsession with making everyone feel safe and welcomed.

They are missing the life-changing opportunity to become ingratiated to another, in testing their own metal, in developing their own personal resilience and emotional fortitude. And ultimately, their ability to adapt to an environment, and to transform themselves.

We are not doing them any favors by denying them these opportunities and calling it welcoming and inclusive.

What we are actually doing is fostering weakness and projecting our own sheltered materialism onto all those who come here in order to experience cultural strength and conscious, courageous individuality—in us—and in themselves.

The Old World

Easter as a time of rebirth is far older than our Christian framework and in honor of this truth I’d like to share a relevant personal story.

I have never been a religious person and do not come from a particularly religious family. I’d label my religious influence in the ‘minimal’ category—I did go to Sunday school for a short time as a child, it was a Christian Science church that my grandparents attended for some of my young life. I remember my first experience of understanding that “JewIsh” was something different than “Christian” not until I was in high school. It made hardly an impact beyond a basic curiosity for me. What I learned then was that “the Jews” in our suburban Midwest milieu went to the high school in the rich suburbs, not ours in the middle-rent area of the burbs.

Then I went abroad and met a Jewish girl from this very high school, because all the high schools in our area shared the same overseas programs. We became friends for that short period and I consoled her when she burst into sobs upon visiting a Holocaust museum. I was moved by her pain and sorrow expressed for the suffering of a people she never knew, but still called her own. I had never experienced such a feeling before myself and the others in our group seemed annoyed or off-put by her overt signs of grief that were perhaps exaggerated, I don’t know, it’s possible, after all we were teenage girls, that does happen.

I had deep interests in language and culture from a young age that was not shared by others in my family. But my mom was open to my sense of adventure and supported my vagabond spirit as much as she could.

Traveling was the greatest rush of my life up until that time and I became quite obsessed with it. I expected my raison d’etre was to become a travel writer, which from the vantage point of today is almost humorous, considering I gave up traveling many years ago, as protest against Homeland Security measures of bodily harassment.

But for two decades I was ALL over the place. I still miss it. I still hope someday travel becomes what it once was to me, before the tyranny began in earnest and I chose to make a such a sacrifice in response.

By the time I’d visited Prague I’d seen many of the great cities of Europe. I loved Paris and Munich in particular; did not care for Berlin or Bern; would’ve moved to Amsterdam in a heartbeat.

I felt already as a seasoned traveler when the overnight train deposited me in Prague in the summer of 1990 at age 22. I knew enough to hang out on the railroad platform with my backpack until some suitable locals passed by offering a room for rent. Hotels were for aristocrats, not backpackers, and cheap lodging was not easy to come by, even in that still relatively cheap city.

I installed myself in the offered closet called a room. I got by on butchered German from my high school days and met only two other travelers who spoke English. It was the most foreign of cities I’d visited thus far, because the Soviet influence was still palpable everywhere, the Velvet Revolution had taken place the year before.

It really did feel like stepping back in time, everything felt old, and to me, drab. Gray and drab, bordering on depressing. The people seemed spent. The buildings looked dilapidated. The cars were rusty jalopies. The cafes were hardly the vibrant displays of conviviality as in Paris. But there was something else far more provocative to me than all which seemed missing having come from ‘the west’.

The first night I ventured out in tourist mode across the Charles Bridge I was stopped speechless in my steps. It was spring, but it was cold and drizzling and I was lured to an outdoor puppet show on the banks of the Vltava. I laughed because the children watching were laughing. I stayed for a while to watch them watching.

I didn’t think of my brief friendship with the Jewish girl, even in this most Jewish of cities. I’d read my guidebooks, I knew the city was seeped in old world culture and was beyond impressed with its architecture, a subject that had fascinated me already for a decade.

I integrate her now in this story for what happened next. I offered the backstory here in order to highlight that what happened next was completely outside of my influences and upbringing and any frame of reference beyond that one incident of that Jewish girl at the Holocaust museum.

When I gazed out over the Vltava from the Charles Bridge that night, quite alone in the cold and drizzle, an unknown and unforgettable emotion rolled over me. Like her, who that day could only express her emotion in tears, I could only express mine in awe. I felt as if my jaw had dropped and I stood cemented in place like one of the many towering statues.

I knew this place before, that’s all I felt. It was as if time and space had vanished and the people and the language and the events of that place, completely unknown to me, were instantly my own. It was the briefest of moments, come and gone as quickly as a dream, but more evocative than any lived experience. The past had invaded and embodied me, some sort of deep nostalgia had resurfaced, and the only word I could ever come up to try to describe it was Love, as lame as that is. Love, as in somehow, Magic.

That’s always made me curious. How could a foreign city evoke such an intense and inexplicable and ephemeral yet still fully embodied emotion?

I had no idea the answer then and still don’t have one. But something of what I experienced in that brief moment is as close as I am to a lived understanding of God.

Since the door of travel for me was closed by the tyrants, the window that opened is arm-chair traveling from the comfort of my hammock and it feels like a blessing.

That is thanks to technology (irony to the Luddite, right?) and to kindred spirits who show me that indeed, there is an old world magic that might have been built seeking rebirth through our eyes, and maybe that’s what I felt then, and maybe that’s what the Jewish girl felt, and maybe that’s happening right now to someone else at this very moment.

Thanks to Jon Levi for his fascinating work in re-imagining our history and re-igniting my nostalgia.

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